Minecraft creator Markus 'Notch' Persson told attendees of the GDC Indie Games Summit that the notion of piracy as being theft is incorrect.

"Piracy is not theft," said Persson during the session. "If you steal a car, the original is lost. If you copy a game, there are simply more of them in the world. There is no such thing as a 'lost sale.' Is a bad review a lost sale? What about a missed ship date?"

Persson suggested to attendees that many developers see pirates not as "inherently evil, but as potential customers." Persson also took on comments made by Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata, saying that his criticism of small and rampant mobile and social games excludes the fact that games such as Minecraft are more of a service than a one-time purchase. Persson said that games such as his creation and Angry Birds are constantly adding updates and new content and that both have incredible sales numbers.

"Treat game development as a service," he said. "Make a game last longer than a week. You can't pirate an online account."

Comments

I agree. It's not theft, but like plagiarism (another form of copying) there are still problems. Just cultural instead of legal. Think on the recent Rovio/Box 2D issue: was the latter's creator stolen from? No, but an opportunity to benefit (not necessarily financially) was withheld by the lack of citation. Can we stop going round in circles, add something new or call it a day?

Andrew Eisen, your closed-end view of the subject amazes me. Then again, it's not necessarily being a developer that leads you to understand piracy, but being a proper businessman.

Microsoft would not be the giant it is if not for piracy. Their operating system was made a world standard by pirates. You can argue this all you want, but look at Microsoft's recent moves and you can see they still see the merit: they released the .NET Framework to the public. That move just further cemented Microsoft's dominance over the OS market. By giving away things for free, they have made more money.

You can see tons of examples of this mentality every day. McDonalds giving away free coffees and biscuits to encourage later sales, restaurants having "wing nights" where people buy a lot of cheap chicken wings but also buy a lot of expensive drinks, theatres offering cheap movies on nights people normally wouldn't go... tons of businesses have come to understand that by asking for less money they can make more. Why developers have yet to understand this practice is beyond me.

Photoshop could offer a much cheaper base package with optional purchased add-ons. They would see far more sales. Anti-virus programs could offer dirt cheap yearly subscriptions for multiple machines. They would see far greater sales. And games could drop the price of the base game and put out a lot of cheap DLC, and they would see far more success.

The guys getting into the F2P market are business geniuses. Just look at the success of LOTRO or DDO. I bet Champions Online will be just as successful.

Piracy is not some god-forsaken enemy that you must spend all your free time fighting, it is a market response to high prices and generally low quality and support. Prove that your product is worth paying for and people will pay for it. Or preferably, give it away for free and sell add-ons/upgrades, and you won't have to prove anything: free speaks for itself.

Low quality and support? Why bother to pirate it, then? The way I see it, if it's not worth paying for, it's not worth stealing, either.

I don't care how people justify it. Piracy is theft in my eyes. If it's not worth paying for, make your statement by not buying it. Pirating it just says "It's worth buying, I just don't wanna pay for it."

"Piracy isn't theft" isn't intended to mean that it isn't against the law, just that you can't equate infringement (that's what the law calls it, not "piracy") to theft casually like that. It's no more applicable than equating infringement to murder.

By the way, part of the problem with this discussion is the over-use of metaphor and simile. Andrew, copying is not "taking". It's copying. Authorized or unauthorized, moral or immoral, it's still duplication instead of the transfer implied in the word "taking".

If you're going to make a categorical, definition-based argument, then you need to write with absolute clarity.

I would be a bit more impressed by the impassioned arguments about copyright if both Microsoft and Apple hadn't (arguably) built their fortunes on it. MS, after all, is notorious for tolerating copying of its OS and productivity suites in order to create path dependency in users who would go on to buy copies at the workplace; and if you think that copyright infringement had nothing to do with the explosive success of the iPod, you're dreaming.

The problem with chattering on about "theft" is that it misses what a copyright IS: a government-granted monopoly. That's it. It's more a privilege than a right. It's a privilege with the full weight and force of the government behind it, mind you, but at the end of the day it's as much the 21st century version of a Letter of Marque or a Chartered Company than anything else. It has nothing to do with any sort of natural right to property: if it did, you wouldn't have anything that is NOT subject to copyright (like words, fashion designs, and ideas) and copyrights would never expire.

(It's not like you automagically get either patents or trademarks either.)

That's why copyright and patent researchers like Birgitte Andersen advocate that we look at them as "intellectual monopoly privileges" and avoid the "property" word entirely. To call them "property" just muddies the waters, and gives too much leeway to those who are seeking to extract economic rents. I'm sure that the East India Company, if asked, would also have vigorously defend its Crown Charter (and associated economic rents) by referring to them as its "property". But it was only ever really a government-granted monopoly. Just like "IP".

So, yes, breaking a copyright is illegal. It's also (in the eyes of many or most people) immoral. But Persson is right. To call it "theft" just misses the point.

I've made it through about a hundred and fifty comments, and im struck by whats been missed. We could spend a spectacular amount of time debating a game developers understanding of legal semantics or ardently defending our knowledge of same but that misses the best of his statements *and* behaviors in response to the thing that is piracy. If you want to ensure a contuning revenue stream from your efforts at making games, make the portal to your wares freely and easily distributed. Behind that portal, feed a continuing and dynamic stream of content. Reward loyalty as demonstrated both by payment and continued interest. Give achievements and bonus points and continued adventures. Continue your interactions with your players, and revel in them. It's 2011. Stop selling boxed goods and start selling services. Stop wasting energy and intellect on defending publishers. Take a page from musicians. If you want to make real money, stand up and perform directly to your audience, and don't stop performing post launch. Doing so both answers the developers legitimate desire to be compensated for work and sidesteps the retailing upcharge, resale market, pirates, and ALL this pedantry about copyright and gets us back to making a good living being what we were born to be: entertainers.

Piracy is piracy. People dance around the subject and come up with rhetoric and excuses and theories and so forth, but piracy is a bad thing no matter how you look at it. I think you would be quite challenged to find someone in the game industry that outright says piracy is beneficial.

My point isn't and wouldn't be that the debate over piracy's criminality is anything other than flailing for justification for breaking the law. Photographing the Mona Lisa without permission is criminal under same constraints. It's also boring.

My point is this. Debating over how horrible pirates are or aren't is f'ing BORING. Nagging after venn diagrams of piracy vs. theft might be interesting to teams of lawyers somewhere, but the last I checked legal teams don't generate much in the way of revenue for anyone other than themselves. It doesn't serve me to spend angling on this situation in that way.

Suing each individual pirate is impractical. The ESA's efforts to shut down PirateBay are wonderful, but do not serve to line my pockets or to provide much in the way of a deterrent for whatever the next Napster/Limewire/etc becomes. I'm not suggesting these efforts shouldn't be undertaken. I'm not suggesting piracy isn't a potentially crippling issue. I'm suggesting I have Better Ways to Apply Myself.

What DOES serve me is to learn how to pull what levers I Can Control As A Developer to corner more revenue for my efforts. One of the ways to do so is to make my front end easy to "steal" and my back end very very hard to steal, and very much worth paying for.

While the piracy vs theft debate that is going on is intresting ill get to it in a minute.

"Piracy is not theft," said Persson during the session. "If you steal a car, the original is lost. If you copy a game, there are simply more of them in the world..."

Maybe im reading to much into this statement, but the point I think he is trying to get accross is that you can't look piracy the same way you look at theft. In general the way you stop theft is to lock things down. With digital goods locking things down (yay DRM) is ineffective.

"... There is no such thing as a 'lost sale.' Is a bad review a lost sale? What about a missed ship date?"

I think what he's trying to say is there are things that can affect sales, however unlyss your are %100 positive that someone was going to buy your game didn't it's not a lost sale because you didn't have the sale to begin with. I don't believe that every downloaded copy of a game is a lost sale. You really have to take into account cost and the value of the game to the consumer.

I think that developers and publishers really need to do is not see pirates as an evil threat, but as competition. Pirating can often offer better service (open 24/7, wide varity of goods, quick shiping, DRM ripped out and well it's hard to beat free) and your not going to beat that hitting your paying customers (ya know, the ones that actually gave you money) with limitations (number of computers you have it installed on, can only play if your online, ect). One example of this working well is Steam. Ill be the first to admit that Steam is far from perfict but it has taken a lot of the aspects that make pirating so appealing and seem to be making money off it.

As for the piracy vs theft argument, really your just arguing semantics. The fact is if you are pirating, you are breaking the law. I do think the fair use, copyright and IP laws do need updating for the times, but breaking the law because you don't agree with it is still breaking the law.

Yes, it's semantics. Semantics is the study of meaning, not necessarily "meaningless bickering over stuff nobody in their right mind cares about", as a lot of people seem to assume. If people are using words as if they mean something they don't, it can be a Very Bad Thing. What's wrong with pointing it out when that is the case?

Because it misses the point?
If your objective is to feed yourself, spending energy debating the merits of GMO crops does not fill your belly.
If your objective is to make money selling your work, arguing about the semantics copyright law or morality of "temporary piracy" does nothing to generate revenue.
Craft works that people will pay for in a way that best provokes payment. Focus there.
Not on the jerk that bought your game from a used shop, not on the guy who stole it outright, not on what might have been, not on percieved or actual threat. This world has pirates (and a dozen other things to sap your sales) in it. That is a part of your ecosystem. Move over, under, around and through. Dislike them if it serves you, but do not stoop to waste much time engaging them except to learn your way past them.

I am allowed to have a different point from the person I reply to, you know. He can be concerned about revenue all he wants, but when he uses words wrongly that could mislead or inflame, I see it as a good thing to pick up on it, even though I might not disagree with his right to generate revenue from his work.

I don't believe I used the word semantics incorrectly, though I do apologize if I misled or inflamed anyone. What I was trying to say is arguing the semantics of piracy is pointless. Whether or not it is theft, copyright infringement, violation of intellectual property or some combination of those three, it's still illegal. It being labeled as theft makes in no less crime as labeling it copyright infringment.

Sorry, I'm not saying you used any word wrong. I'm saying a lot of people use the word 'theft' wrongly to provoke an emotional response rather than letting their arguments stand based on the facts alone. Just because both acts are illegal does NOT make it pointless to make sure that people actually mean the words they say.

I find it interesting that people here speak very negatively about crunch and how hard people work to make games (I'm currently in crunch right now, it's hell). But then turn around and defend people who simply up and take their work for free.

I guess my point is that we work incredibly hard to make these games. In putting that effort, we should have the RIGHT to dictate who gets to experience the fruits of our labor... even if it's our decision to give it away.

If someone takes it without our consent, then they have violated our rights to our product that we have earned through hard (often torturous) work. You may want to argue the semantics of whether it can be labelled "theft" or not but you cannot deny that it is simply WRONG.

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Morality has always been in decline. As you get older, you notice it. When you were younger, you enjoyed it.

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Morality has always been in decline. As you get older, you notice it. When you were younger, you enjoyed it.

Every single one of you is in breach of my patent on "a method for arguing all willy-nilly about the semantic value of words, specifically in allusion to piracy, copyright, and theft, while absolutely ignoring one another in favour of your own supposedly superior ethics, and displaying flagrant signs of hypocricy and situationally dependent opportunism besides."

You all owe me something in the neighborhood of forty-eight billion dollars. I'll call my bank and get them started on writing up a payment schedule.

(For the record, I find that Andrew is correct in his assesment of the letter of the law, whereas the rest of you have a point about disobedience regarding the spirit.)

As soon as I saw the title of this article I thought "Andrew Eisen will be ALL OVER THIS." :)

Theft is stealing property, of course you're right. But we dont call copyright just 'property', we call it 'intellectual property'. Are intellectual properties still property? Of course they are, it's in the name. But it's different enough that we feel compelled to qualify it with the word 'intellectual'. To call copyright 'intellectual property' and then NOT do equal justice by calling copyright infringement 'intellectual theft' is lazy at best, and disingenuous propaganda at worst. Do not accept it in any discussion other than informal colloquial dialog. And CERTAINLY do not accept it when discussing legal status - which, when a web post discusses copyright infringement, you're kinda locked in to from the start.

Talk to ten different lawyers in depth about just about anything, and you'll get ten different answers.

As to the 'lost sale', lets not beat about the bush - Markus is using hyperbole here. Or at least I hope he is, because to say piracy does not incur any lost sales at all is an exaggeration. I mean, FAST and the like use vastly inflated baloney figures for losses to piracy, but two wrongs don't make a right, so we shouldn't counter their misleading rubbish with some more misleading rubbish.

Here's the distinction you're looking for. The copyright in itself is the property. When granted a copyright, you own the distribution rights of a work. That is a fact of the law, but people conflate that to meaning that they own the works protected by that copyright. That is entirely false. You don't own your works, but you do own the right to determine who gets a copy. Thus, copyright is your property, as the law states, but what it protects is not. Creative works belong to the public domain, but are excluded from it until the author's copyright expires. So when you copy something against an author's copyright, you are not stealing anything because the creative work belongs to the public, but you are violating the author's rights.

Hmm. I'm not convinced that works are in the public domain by default, but you certainly raise some interesting points. You cant steal the copyright, which is the intellectual property... and there is no physical property... so what exactly has been 'stolen'?

Exactly. The copyright holder's assets are affected by piracy exactly as much as it would be if you had refused to buy the copyrighted thing... which is to say, not at all. They don't lose anything, because they did not have something to start with.

As the various content companies keep trying to tell us, they aren't selling a game/song/movie - they're selling the rights to use a copy of it. The problem is, they are *also* attempting to treat the copy as a real object that they are selling. This logical contradiction is the reason why copyright is such a mess right now, and why some people keep trying to argue that piracy is theft.

For a real-world issue with the "piracy is theft" argument: if someone were to pirate a copy of Minecraft, and then liked it so much that they bought a copy of it, would they still owe Mojang for the pirated copy? It would be nonsensical for the law to attempt to distinguish between two absolutely identical digital files, and it would get even more insane if you were to then create several copies of those files (something which *must* be allowed for a game, because otherwise it's impossible to use it on a computer).

I know of at least one situation where a single pirated copy of Minecraft led to at least three purchases of the game that would not have been made otherwise. If piracy were really theft, that would mean Mojang would still have "lost" the price of one copy of the game, even though they've gained three times that amount and the "stolen" copy (which was never in Mojang's posession to start with) may no longer exist.

Quite true. The thing people don't realize is that copyright is a protection for the right to exclude others from distributing works you create. It's not designed to secure/protect profit, but it is there to provide incentive by creating the opportunity for profit. The thing is, you can completely ignore the protections copyright grants you and still make a living with art if you sell your time and effort like every other traditional occupation out there. Most artists/authors do this already as an employee of a studio or publisher. The difference is that they get paid by investors (publishing corporations) whereas copyright foresaken (for lack of a better term) artists get paid by the consumers directly. The trick is to learn to sell game development as a service like a web design firm. The only glaring difference is that the cost of production would be distributed among many customers rather than centralized like a publisher.

I dont care what the law says is actual theft or stealing because I believe what I want to believe and I will condem those that go against. If I believe GOD kills Solider because of FAGS then so be it because I AM RIGHT. If I believe that video games cause violent & agressive behavior then I will do everything in my power to have them blocked and banned because I AM RIGHT.

The Law is WRONG and needs to be changed to SUIT MY VIEWS. Precedent and actual legal mumbo jumbo is ALL WRONG. Also lets change the law to no long allow GAYS in America and to BAN violent video games. By the way the Majority agrees with me, I dont care what FACTS and SCIENCE say is the truth. The majority also believes that SUN revolves around the EARTH and the Moon is made of green cheese so this MUST BE TRUE.

Your point is what? That people's beliefs don't dictate law? They aren't used to fight laws, create laws, overturn laws, or point out flaws in laws? Laws spring forth from nothingness to tell us what we can and can't do? Your very attempt at humor mimics the ideas your mocking. Either it's brilliant satire or your trolling.

You seem to be under the strange impression that laws don't come from opinionated people. At some point a stance must be adopted, someone's viewpoint will be enforced over others. Sometimes facts and science can create scenarios that our consciences simply aren't comfortable with or cannot provide sufficiently concise answers and thus we are left with our opinions.

Hopefully those opinions are skewed for the good of all, even those who disagree with said opinion. But does that make a law any less of a specific idealogical belief? I think not.

yes your exactly right, Just look at jack thompson he used his beliefs and all the evidence he conjured to fight against the laws of freedom of speech, consumer rights & so forth to prove once and for all that video games cause violence and are a danger to society. It doesnt matter what other people believe because jack thompson believes that jack thompson is RIGHT.

After all Illnois still declares Pluto a planet and has passed laws to declare pluto a planet no matter what science says. Because Illnois believes pluto and illnois believes they are right.

Hmm thats great and all, But anyone actually look at this from a technical perspective?

How can you treat software as a service if you dont have quick distribution service or the architecture to do so?

For instance Minecraft and Angry birds are on Computer Systems where they can be updated and patched. However game consoles are NOT necessarily connected to the internet and are readily available to download updates and patches. Also the game systems may not have the architecture to update the games.

Being as someone who travels overseas a lot & rarely at home I dont have my game system always connected to internet to get the lastest version.

Well, I've already gone into the subject at some length and don't intend to do so again, but here's a quick summary:

1. Legally, copyright infringement is not theft.2. That doesn't mean it's legal or ethical.3. Colloquially, copyright infringement IS theft -- in the sense of "You stole my idea", "You stole my bit," etc.4. What is "stolen" in an act of copyright infringement is not a physical object or something of monetary value, it's an owner's control of a work.

#4 is important. I really hate the justification that "If you take something that isn't yours without paying for it, it's stealing", because it implies it would be okay to do it if the work in question were given away at no charge. This is not the case -- free software is covered by copyright too. Releasing VLC on the App Store is a copyright violation just as surely as torrenting Crysis 2.

There's also another element to the justification that you're missing. "Without permission".

If you take something that isn't yours without paying, but you have permission to take it, that's the same as it being given away at no charge. But if you take something that isn't yours without paying, without permission, that IS, by definition, theft.

Example: Divinity 2: Ego Draconis came out for the Xbox 360. It tanked. So now Atlus is re-tooling the game to hopefully make it better. If Atlus didn't have permission, they would have faced all kinds of lawsuits. But Atlus is making the same game because they have permission by cdv Software.

The stolen car analogy is stupid. When it comes to games, no one is buying the original. You buy a copy, and everyone should be able to process that concept.

If a game, even being a copy of an original, has a price tag attached to it, and you decide that you much rather skip paying to get it free, is the same as going to the dealership and driving the car away without paying. You weren't a "potential" customer for that car, and surely you don't plan on paying for it if you like or think its worth it.

Like Minecraft. I don't care for it, but I didn't go and download/play it just because its free.

That’s the problem with IP its not a limited item that can be clearly seen as being moved from one place to another. Copies are nothing more than an insignificant attempted at free over the air broadcasting, the numbers of people downloading are minuscule to the numbers that are buying. All the more so information should never be restricted to buying consumers only not with our broken IP system that shoes away starving peasants from the Nobles forests. Rather make the process of distribution insignificant as long as there is no monetary flow around it.

Define undermine? how can a few drops of lemon juice make a bucket of water sour?

Considering the current size of file sharing if its halved by going after the monetary flow around file shearing and general distribution it becomes insignificant because people can only share so much before their ISP says tilt or they have to shell out more for more bandwidth , free file sharing is heavily limited by the fact it has to be free.

While you haven't defined "limited", I do believe I owe you my own definition of "undermine". Allow me to phrase it like this. Creators made the game so as to be sold and make a profit. As a principle, this is screwing with them when you decide to not give them the money that they earn for the work. And right and wrong aren't defined in a sense as to how much of a "wrong" makes it "really wrong". You add a few drops of lemon juice when you shouldn't have? You still wrongfully did so. You still made it sour. How sour it really ends up being doesn't change right and wrong.

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." -Albert Einstein

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." -Albert Einstein

in all technicality as far as AAA games go, the creators have already been paid (and in some cases moved on to new projects or vacation), it's the publishers that have invested millions (and therefore the actual owners of the IP) into the project that are getting 'screwed with'. other than that, you're on the money by current U.S. copyright laws.

the way you keep hammering at the topic with such a closed unwavering thought process kinda reminds me of JT and WBC and the way that they keep/kept beating everyone over the head with their opinions(-as-facts) rants. you seem to me like a crusader or zealot on this issue, a one tracked mind that refuses to listen to majority opinion or reason. just my observations.

First, the "majority opinion" isn't immediately the correct one or somehow given more credit due to it's popularity. To insist as much is an appeal to majority, appeal to popularity, whatever name you prefer for the fallacy. Unwavering doesn't equal zealot either. Are any of those who hold their opinion opposite of AE's zealots as well, since a few of them appear to be unwavering as well. I find that AE has listen to the other side and provided counters. Right or wrong, this is not the sign of a "crusader" or "zealot".

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." -Albert Einstein

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." -Albert Einstein

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ZippyDSMlee: .....win8 hates any left over hidden install partitions from other version of windows....only waste 5 hours finding that out...its ahrder than you think keeping up with 4 or 5 HDDS......03/03/2015 - 4:44am

Matthew Wilson: I am going to pax east, any games you guys want me to check out?03/02/2015 - 11:23pm

ZippyDSMlee: No one remembers the days of Cinemagic and Cynergy eh? :P, meh even MGS is getting to film like....03/02/2015 - 8:44pm

MechaTama31: I was about to get all defensive about liking Metal Gear Solid, but then I saw that he was talking about "cinematic" as a euphemism for "crappy framerate".03/02/2015 - 8:29pm

prh99: Just replace cinematic with the appropriate synonym for poo and you'll have gist of any press release.03/02/2015 - 5:34pm

Monte: Though from a business side, i would agree with the article. While it would be smarter for developers to slow down, you can't expect EA, Activision or ubisoft to do something like that. Nintnedo's gotta get the third party back.02/28/2015 - 4:36pm

Monte: Though it does also help that nintendo's more colorful style is a lot less reliant on graphics than more realistic games. Wind Waker is over 10 years old and still looks good for its age.02/28/2015 - 4:33pm

Monte: With the Wii, nintnedo had the right idea. Hold back on shiny graphics and focus on the gameplay experience. Unfortunatly everyone else keeps pushing for newer graphics and it matters less and less each generation. I can barely notice the difference02/28/2015 - 4:29pm

Monte: ON third party developers; i kinda think they should slow down to nintendo's pace. They bemoan the rising costs of AAA gaming, but then constantly push for the best graphics which is makes up a lot of those costs. Be easier to afford if they held back02/28/2015 - 4:27pm

Matthew Wilson: http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2015/02/28/the-world-is-nintendos-if-only-theyd-take-it/ I think this is a interesting op-ed, but yeah it kind of is stating the obvious.02/28/2015 - 2:52pm